


an angel like a memory

by starblessed



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Time Travel Fix-It, okay look death happens but they dont stay dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 12:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12770814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: Sledge gives one last gurgle before going silent. His wide eyes are locked on Snafu’s face, impossibly dark in the stillness that follows. All light has fled from them. There is nothing left behind but stillness, a shadow of death.Slowly, Snafu exhales. He lowers his head to Sledge’s blood-soaked chest, feeling hot liquid stain his forehead. By now he does not care about that, or about the bullets whizzing over their heads. He is very tired.Back again, then. Damn it.





	an angel like a memory

The fourth time, Sledge takes three bullets to the lungs, and another to the center of his spine.

It happens so quickly that Snafu doesn’t see it coming. He doesn’t glimpse the shooter through the chaos of battle; he does not hear the last thing Sledge screams to him over the din of gunfire. All he is aware of is that Sledge is running at his side, and then suddenly he is not.

He doesn’t stop to think, because if he does that he’s as good as dead. He grabs Sledge under the arms and hauls him off the battlefield with all the strength his malnourished body’s got in him.

By the time they’ve reached cover, blood is bubbling out of Sledge’s mouth. It runs past his lips and down the side of his pale cheek in a pulsing river. He’s choking on it. Sledge’s eyes are large and black, gaping up at the sky; when they lock on Snafu’s face, he looks as if he’s seeing a ghost.

He must be trying to move, because his shoulder gives a weak twitch -- that’s all he can manage. He’s paralyzed, not that it matters, because he’s dying. Sledge is dying in his arms, and the eerie stillness of these labored breaths will be the last he takes on this earth.

Snafu doesn’t hold his hand, because he knows he won’t be able to feel it. Instead, he cups his cheek, bringing his face in close.

“It’s okay,” he says, and knows Sledge can see through the lie like a pane of glass. “You’re gonna be okay. I’ve got you, Sledgehammer.”

Sledge gives one last gurgle before going silent. His wide eyes are locked on Snafu’s face, impossibly dark in the stillness that follows. All light has fled from them. There is nothing left behind but stillness, a shadow of death.

Slowly, Snafu exhales. He lowers his head to Sledge’s blood-soaked chest, feeling hot liquid stain his forehead. By now he does not care about that, or about the bullets whizzing over their heads. He is very tired.

Back again, then. Damn it.

* * *

He wasn’t there to witness Sledge’s first death, but he heard about it afterwards. A routine scouting mission, everyone said. It shouldn’t have gone wrong. No one had any excuses for what happened; the scouting party just didn’t come back, and Sledge was among them.

They found them all the next day. Sledge was stung up to a tree, neck slashed ear to ear in a twisted mockery of a smile. They stabbed through one of his eyes. His bible was missing.

Afterwards, things got dark for Snafu. It was like all the light had been sucked out of the island at once, leaving a gaping void of emptiness in its wake. Every breath he took felt like sawdust filling his lungs; still, he continued to breathe, because he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t cry. He didn’t plead. He sat by one of the fallen enemy bodies and played with his knife, carving slow patterns into the dead Jap’s face until he looked like the world’s ugliest Picasso painting. He hissed under his breath as he carved Sledge’s initials into an unmoving chest: _he ain’t supposed to be dead, this is your fault, bastard, this was all you. You deserve worse than this. Your fault. All yours._

(Even remembering later, he can’t say for sure if he was talking to the Jap or himself.)

Snafu closed his eyes in the middle of a rainstorm. Maybe that’s when he cried, with so much water falling around that even he couldn’t be sure of his own tears; or maybe he’s too dried out, not quite human enough to cry anymore. He closed his eyes, and went to sleep in the storm.

The next morning, he woke up bone-dry, with the sun shining overhead. A bony elbow was digging into his ribs.

He hissed out a curse, shifting onto his side, and came face-to-face with Sledge.

His first instinct was to scream, because waking up next to a dead body is something that could scare even him, even now. His brain worked too fast to let him. Snafu’s eyes landed upon Sledge’s bare neck, long and smooth, unmarred by any mortal gashes. His eyes were closed (they weren’t, the day before) and his lips werr parted. He was snoring, just a bit. The hem of the ratty shirt he used as a pillow fluttered under him with each breath.

 _Breath,_ Snafu thought, feeling as if he’d forgotten how to do that himself.

He stared at Sledge for a long time, not daring to believe what he was seeing. Inevitably, Sleeping Beauty began to stir — Sledge had always been an early riser, even when sleep was so hard to come by — and his eyes fluttered open to settle on Snafu’s face.

They were warm brown, pulsing with life. Some shattered piece inside of Snafu snapped back into place.

“Mmm… mornin’, Snaf.” Sledge shifted, arching his back against the ground. Hands rose above his head in a languid stretch. He looked so unguarded, half-awake, that for a second it was possible to forget they were in the middle of a war. That the man in front of him was supposed to be dead.

After a minute, Sledge noticed something was off. Maybe it was Snafu’s silence; maybe it was the way he just couldn’t stop _staring_ at him. Inevitably Sledge’s eyes narrowed. “What?” he demanded, and received no response. “Snafu, what’s the matter?”

Snafu swallowed, leaning forward, and brushed his finger along Sledge’s cheek. Heat pulsed from his skin. He was not cold, clammy and rotting in the throes of death. He was indisputably alive.

Snafu’s voice was shaky when he managed to speak. “You had. Some dirt. Right there. It’s gone now.”

Sledge reached a hand up to his cheek as Snafu ducked, his head, eyes wide as he stared down at himself.

 _Real,_ he thought. His hand burned where it made contact with Sledge’s flesh. Sledge was real, and he was alive.

Later he found out that it was exactly one week ago — less than a week before Sledge’s ill-fated patrol.

When the day comes, Snafu doesn’t try to stop Sledge. Instead, he makes the eagle-eyed discovery of a nest of Jap scouts close to their camp, in the exact direction the patrol would have headed. The Marines blow them away, and there’s no need for a patrol that day. When one is called the next day, Sledge isn’t on it; and that night, every man returns alive.

Snafu doesn’t like to think he saved Sledge’s life. All he knows is that Sledge is alive, and that’s all that matters. Time meanders on, and with every passing day the memory of losing Sledge becomes more distant and dreamlike, until Snafu is left wondering if it ever happened at all.

Then Sledge dies again (an explosion this time, a shower of blood and no body even left to mourn over), and Snafu falls, once more, into darkness.

When he opens his eyes the next morning, Sledge is sleeping beside him.

“What’s the matter?” Sledge asks as Snafu cups his face in both hands. Alive.

That’s when Snafu starts to get it. 

* * *

 

The fifth time is the worst, because it’s not even in battle. There’s nothing Snafu can do, because there was no way to see it coming.

Something makes Sledge sick. Snafu half-wonders if it wasn’t the food itself on this god-damned island, if the Japanese didn’t slip some arsenic into a coconut and leave it out for them to find. Then again, there are enough snakes around here that can kill with a single bite to make up the difference. He doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t know why; only that one minute Sledge is fine, the next he’s doubling over and vomiting into his own helmet.

Snafu stays with him through the night, and all during the day, until night falls again. The corpsmen can’t do much, because they’ve got nowhere to send him, and nothing to give him there if they did. They urge Snafu to keep him drinking, to not let him sleep too much. If Sledge is going to sweat this out, he has to do it on his own, they say.

To Snafu, that sounds like bullshit. It sounds exactly like saying, _we can’t help you, sorry, maybe you won’t die, better luck next time._ He says as much, and the corpsman just stares at him before walking away.

Burgie brings as much water as he can get his hands on. Forcing it on Sledge is even more painful than seeing him anguish. He is wracked with cramps and fever chills, entire body falling into periodic convulsions before going sill. Usually his eyes are squeezed shut; but sometimes he will open them and stare up, glassy eyed, with no recognition in his face. To him, Snafu may as well be any damn angel. It’s clear he doesn’t know where he is or why, if the occasional delirious whimpers of _“lord”_ or _“mama”_ are any clue.

He doesn’t keep the water down, but Snafu won’t give up. By midnight, Sledge hasn’t vomited in an hour, and has mostly stopped shivering. His head rests in Snafu’s lap; he is painfully still, save for the rhythm of his shallow breaths. Snafu wants to believe this is a good thing.

“You’re over the worst of it, Sledgehammer,” he mutters. “You gon’ be just fine.”

A wheezy breath escapes Sledge’s throat. “Y-you… think?” he whispers, voice so frail that Snafu can barely hear him. His own stomach twists.

“Yeah. You’re gonna be just fine.”

Sledge hums to himself. Snafu can’t see him, but he imagines Sledge’s eyes shut, as if he’s only sleeping — peaceful and out of pain. He remembers the sight of Sledge waking up next to him, and thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. No New Orleans Marci Gras could compare to Sledge in the morning, with sunlight glinting off his hair, his brown eyes soft with sleep as he whispers his first “mornin’, Snaf.”

He wonders if he’ll be seeing that sight again sooner than he thinks.

“M-maybe I… wasn’t meant to go home.”

Sledge’s words are sudden, and more coherent than anything he’s said today. Snafu starts.

“Don’t say that,” he tells him, “Don’t you dare, Sledge.”

“It’s okay. I - I don’t —“ He cuts himself off with a choking gurgle. His body convulses again. Snafu helps Sledge lean to the side until the last mouthfuls of water he drank are out of him once more. When Sledge settles back down, he’s whimpering low in his throat.

It takes him a few minutes more before he completes what he wants to say. “I don’t think I could go home after all this.”

Snafu closes his eyes and tries to pretend he’s not hearing him. Sledge is wrong. There’s a place he belongs, and it’s not in the middle of the Pacific, on Okinawa or Peleliu, haloed by mortar blast and chorused by gunfire. Sledge belongs at home, sitting and reading under a warm Alabama sun. He belongs far away from here.

Snafu will see him make it there. If it’s the last thing he does, Sledge is going to live.

“You’ll make it home,” he tells him, “and then you’ll know.”

Sledge gives one last shudder in his arms, then goes still. Snafu runs his hand through his hair.

When morning comes he finds Sledge’s eyes gaping up at him, empty and unseeing.

This time, he doesn’t even mourn.

* * *

 It takes shoving Sledge out of the path of a bullet one time; making sure he runs in the opposite direction another; keeping a close eye on him, remembering the mistakes he’s already made, watching and waiting and _hoping._

Snafu even finds himself averting things that haven’t happened yet. He’s paying such close attention to Sledge that he spots a sniper in the trees behind him. He’s firing the gun in his hands before his brain has a chance to catch up with his instincts.

Sledge freezes as the bullet whistles right by his ear. For a second he stares at Snafu, shock and confusion duelling upon his face. Then the thump of a body echoes behind him, and his expression clears.

The immeasurable gratitude in Sledge’s eyes makes Snafu feel like he’s just swallowed vinegar. He endures the praise of his company, the exclamations and pats on the back. Sledge doesn’t partake; he doesn’t join the men in subbing him “Snafu the hero” until Snafu feels ready to snap at everyone of them. In fact, Sledge doesn’t say a word until later that night, when they’re both huddled in their foxhole.

“For a second,” he remarks, in a tone so conversational that it takes Snafu aback, “I thought you tried to shoot me.”

“Never,” Snafu replies. “Wouldn’t even think about it.”

“I know that.” Sledge chuckles to himself, even though the matter is anything but funny. When he exhales, the noise echoes in the silence. “I just can’t understand sometimes.”

“Understand what?”

Sledge is quiet for a long moment. By now, Snafu knows him well enough to recognize when he’s got something he doesn’t know how to say. He waits, patient and unobtrusive, eyes lingering on Sledge as he frowns at the dirt wall before him.

“You ever heard of guardian angels?” he says at last. Snafu snorts.

“Don’t tell me you think I’m one of them. I’ll haveta wonder if I really did get you in the head, and now there’s a bullet lodged in your ear makin’ you think all crazy thoughts.” His fingers play piano against his knee, masking his anxiety. He can give Sledge the reaction he expects, but he’d be lying if he said he never thought it himself, once or twice.

For a moment Sledge is silent. Then he starts laughing too, and the sound is as sweet as anything Snafu has ever heard.

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe that’s been your problem this whole time. Would sure explain a lot.”

Snafu elbows him. “Shut up,” he says, but doesn’t mean it, could never mean it. Sledge leans a little further into him, and that’s how they stay for the rest of the night.

* * *

 

He’s not a guardian angel, because guardian angels don’t fail. It’s always the same story — he slips up, Sledge dies, and when he wakes up the next morning it’s a week earlier and Sledge is sleeping by his side. History doesn’t reset, doesn’t go back on itself — he never has to relive the day of the patrol again — but it’s like it skips briefly backwards whenever Sledge winds up dying.

If Snafu were his guardian angel, Sledge wouldn’t have died in the first place. If he was any type of guardian, he would be able to keep him safe.

He can’t do that, not really. All he can do is keep Sledge from dying when he knows it’s going to happen, and try his damndest the rest of the time to keep him from getting hurt.

It’s not enough. The thought of Sledge making it home in one piece, however, is enough motivation to keep Snafu determined to save him.

Again. And again. And again.

* * *

 

Sledge has died eight times when the war finally ends.

Snafu looks at Sledge, looks up at the sky, and wonders if he’s dreaming. Every time before, the lost days before each reset, feels hazy and distant as a dream; maybe this is another one. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow back in the middle of the war, with Sledge once again sleeping by his side.

The sight he longed for after every one of Sledge’s deaths is now what he most dreads. He can’t stand the idea of this not being real. He can’t go back and start fight to save Sledge’s life once more; he will go insane from it.

Right now Sledge is alive, Sledge is here, and that’s all Snafu can ask for.

 _Did it right this time,_ he thinks, studying Sledge’s face when he’s not looking. _Finally got it right._

* * *

 

After that, he doesn’t go back, and it’s a relief.

He thinks of telling Sledge once. It occurs to him on the train ride back, lookin at Sledge with his head bent in a book. Why would he say if he knew that he died? That Snafu watched him die, so many times over, until the feeling of Sledge taking his last breaths in his arms became as familiar to Snafu as his own heartbeat?

He doesn’t tell him. There’s no point. It would only upset him — or he’d decide that Snafu’s really nuts. _Crazy ol’ Snafu, who got his head blown to bits back on Okinawa, until he convinced himself he was some sort of god._

 _(Not a god,_ a voice in the back of his head reminds him, _a guardian angel.)_

No, he won’t tell Sledge. That would be the worst thing he could do.

He knows what he wants; but he also knows what the best thing he can do for Sledge is. Sledge needs to be as far away from him as possible. Whatever sort of magic kept bringing Snafu back to save him, it was never meant to last after the war. Now his job is done. Sledge is alive… and Snafu’s part in his life is all played out. He knows that, and as much as a part of him hates it, he knows the only thing he can do is let Sledge go.

When the train stops, he pauses at the sight of Sledge’s sleeping form. He looks so peaceful lying there, face placid and mouth eyes lightly shut. He looks almost like a kid — one who’s never seen war. One who’s never died in Snafu’s arms.

He’s seen Sledge’s sleeping face many times before, but it’s never made him feel quite so overwhelmed as it does in this moment.

 _You did it,_ Shelton, he thinks to himself. _He’s going home._

Snafu turns his back on Sledge, and walks off the train.

His first breath of Louisiana air smells like home, and all he can think is that he can’t believe he made it here too. Back on that island, a part of him was convinced that t was an eye for an eye — maybe Sledge was destined to live only if Snafu died. He never thought they might both make it out alive; he never imagined he’d get to go home.

They both made it back. They’re both alive.

Snafu tells himself that’s all he could ask for.

* * *

 

He falls asleep in his own bed and wakes up to the rattling of a train car.

Burgie is sitting across from him, nose buried in a book; but that is not the first thing Snafu is aware of.

There is a bony elbow digging into his side, and the sound of light snoring echoes in his ears. He can feel hot breath against his neck, and a weight upon his shoulder.

Slowly, he turns his head to come face to face with Sledge’s sleeping face.

The movement jars Sledge. He shifts slightly, nose crinkling and lips smacking, before his eyes flutter open. Hazy with sleep, they regard Snafu without an ounce of surprise. It is as if they are exactly where they are meant to be, waking up alongside each other.

It looks like the magic isn't done with them yet. Maybe it never will be; maybe it’s been there all along. Snafu feels a smile stretch across his own lips.

“Mornin’ Sledgehammer.”


End file.
